The most discussed thing about Jessica Mendoza, now in her third full season as a regular ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” analyst, is also among the least extraordinary.

She is a woman.

So is 49.558 percent of the global population, according to the World Bank.

Anyone unaccustomed to hearing a woman’s voice in conversations at this point in the 21st century is a hermit, a monk, or needs to broaden his circle of acquaintances.

The whole “anyone who hasn’t faced major-league pitching has no business talking about it” argument doesn’t hold up, given the paucity of sports writers, sports talk hosts and fans who do so daily.

“Baseball’s evolved to the point where the people really leading and sculpting these teams, a lot of them never played or played through Little League or high school or college,” said Mendoza, a former pro and college fast-pitch softball star who has been with ESPN for 11 years.

“Their knowledge of the game and the decisions they're making are based on a variety of things, good or bad, no matter how you feel about that, it’s not like they played at some high level to be able to make these decisions.”

The Cubs brain trust of Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer has in no way been held back by their lack of major-league playing experience.

Like fellow ESPN Sunday commentator Alex Rodriguez, Mendoza self-identifies as a baseball nerd. It doesn’t always come out on telecasts in their effort to keep things conversational and accessible for casual fans as well as the seamheads.

“Where the game has gone with analytics and some of the cooler technology teams use, we’re at this place now where it’s challenging to (use) this amazing information and intel, whether it’s on pitch angles or something else,” Mendoza said.

Before the Cubs put pitcher Yu Darvish on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right triceps, Mendoza was breaking down his pitches this year, which were hittable, and last year, which often weren’t.

“The amount of difference with his horizontal and vertical differences on his slider, you take this information and it’s like 9.2 inches on his slider, the vertical drop on that pitch last year,” Mendoza said. “That was his swing-and-miss (pitch), and now it’s (hitting) the barrel. … That’s exciting to me, but how do I make that as exciting to the viewers? That’s the challenge.”

As a novice calling games, Rodriguez also finds his understanding of baseball sometimes outstripping his ability to express it simply.

“Baseball is simple in some ways, and in other ways, it’s very complex,” Rodriguez said. “It is truly a chess match, not a checkers match. There are so many residual moves that happen because of one subtle move.

“You can see the domino effect. It’s why an error in one situation is more than just an error, because now a first baseman has to hold the runner on, the third baseman has to play up. It causes the pitcher to throw an extra 15 pitches, which keeps him out of the seventh inning. That puts the bullpen in play.”

In the bottom of the eighth inning of the Cubs’ 8-3 rout of the Giants on Sunday, Rodriguez engaged Mendoza and play-by-play man Matt Vasgersian about the need for most young hitters to worry less about home runs (a lucrative skill but one that results in too many strikeouts).

A-Rod believes, if they want postseason success, they need to learn “winning baseball,” which includes honing their abilities to bunt and execute hit-and-run plays.

Despite the casual way he presented it, it was anything but off the cuff.

Rodriguez was working on how best to articulate the insight days before, and maybe earlier, testing analogies and examples — including one that didn’t quite work about former basketball center Shaquille O’Neal abandoning his inside game for 3-point shots — before it was ready for prime time.

Rodriguez said he tries to keep daughters, Ella and Natasha, in mind when he’s on TV.

“They’re not the biggest or most curious baseball fans in the world,” he said. “I have a hard time just getting them to watch the open on Sunday nights. And when we were up against the Billboards, I really had no chance. But I try to think of them as my target audience.

“To get to chew this stuff up and make it digestible for fans is pretty cool. I try to break it down to where my daughters will understand what I’m saying. If they don’t, then I’m not doing my job.”

It’s a job for which having a Y chromosome is common but not a prerequisite.

Raising its game: ESPN’s 9.1 overnight rating across the metered markets for Sunday’s seventh game of the Cavaliers-Celtics Eastern Conference finals series matched its highest-rated NBA game ever, Game 7 of the 2012 Eastern finals pitting LeBron James’ Heat versus the Celtics.

The 2018 Eastern finals on ESPN averaged a 6.3 metered market rating, up 37 percent from the same matchup in the 2017 Eastern Conference finals on TNT and up 34 percent from ESPN's Western Conference finals coverage last year.

The metered markets are the nation’s largest markets.

All told, this year’s 19 NBA playoff games on ESPN averaged a 3.8 metered market rating, a 31 percent improvement from its 2017 playoff coverage. The NBA Finals begin Thursday on ABC.

Quote of the weekend: “Free Ronnie Woo Woo!” — Vasgersian, offering a distinct battle cry to punctuate his ESPN announcing team’s rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”